Notes from Melanie

For years, Chris Stuckmann has given us some of the greatest movie reviews on the internet. His reviews are less reviews and more like breakdowns on the given films. With someone who clearly understands movies, I was curious to see what Chris Stuckmann was able to create.

His first short film reminds me that it's not easy to create a Hollywood picture. This main character reflects Stuckmann's desire to create movies and because of that we begin to relate with him. It's also touching and sweet, which is what these types of shorts should be. Great work Chris. We all love you.

Going into this I thought, "Well he seems to know a lot about movies so this should be decent." Well turns out I was wrong. This movie is horrible. The first problem is the tone. It's like some kind of weird back n forth from awkward comedy to the serious path of a struggling film maker which is obviously Chris Stuckmann's film-making path put into this movie. I wouldn't mind the comedy if it wasn't spoken by two mediocre actors with no chemistry which points back to bad directing.

Last problem is its almost all handheld cam and if you pay attention hard enough you can see the camera shaking like someone is having a panic attack mid-scene. Really not needed and again bad directing choice. Only good thing I'll say is Flickinger's performance because it seems like he really wanted to show out for Chris. Other than that bad.

The dialogue feels so formulaic and structured, but the film overall is far from boring: actually it's fairly amusing and quite fun to watch. The ludicrous, silly comedic bits - albeit frequently a bit too much - work well for the most part. The leads are really amiable, to be honest.

(6/10)

So, Chris Stuckmann is making movies now. Is good? well no not really, but is it bad? Yes, but for fixable reasons.

The idea of a screen writer needing to finally make a jump to making respected movies is one that can feel emotional to people who are writers, and in that lies the biggest issue with this movie. The script feels like it's tailor made for writers (which is an obvious stand in for Chris) and not much else. All the emotional scenes lose any sense of emotion when it revolves around characters you don't feel connected to. On top of that we go over 3 distinct feelings between the two characters that feel rushed given the short run time of the movie. If you've seen the movie you know these moments.

As for the good parts. The camera work isn't bad. It's nothing stylized or experimental, but for a low budget short film it works. The editing is solid leading to some fun moments from John as the D movie actor. The sound work isn't bad either, giving what could have been really bad audio to this film we actually have well recorded audio, so that deserves props.

I loved Chris for his videos for many years. So I want to see him get somewhere with his career, but that being said I think he should pick either being a film writer (in which he need to work on opening up his writing to a larger demographic and saving his passion projects for when he's finally made it) or being a film maker (in which he shows a lot of promise but really needs to find his style) and find a writer for his ideas.

If you don't know the director is a movie critic, he has reviewed hundreds of movies on his youtube channel and Rotten Tomatoes. I really love his reviews, even through he's way too soft on most movies. The point is he has such a movie knowlegde, so I expected he'd use some of it to create a movie with fantastic plot and cheap (low budget) but genius tricks. Sadly, while this movie has some interesting writting, that's it. Story is very simple, the only thing it's worth watching are the dialogues and movie's somewhat style.

B-